10

For fifteen days I lived an utterly wild life here, like the Gangotas or the poor Bhuihar Brahmins. Not by choice, but largely out of necessity was I compelled to live in this manner. From where was I to procure anything in this jungle? I ate rice and a curry of wild dhundhul; the sepoys would gather wild kakrol or sweet potatoes from the forest, which were then fried or boiled. There was no fish, milk, or ghee—nothing.

Of course, there was no shortage of silli and peacocks in the forest, but as I had little inclination for shooting birds, I had to eat vegetarian fare, despite owning a gun.

There is a fear of tigers in the Phulkiya baihar. I shall recount one incident.

The cold that day was bone-chilling. After finishing my work past ten at night, I had gone to bed early and fallen asleep, when suddenly, I don’t know what time it was, I was woken by the shouts of people. A large group had gathered somewhere at the edge of the jungle and were shouting. I got up and quickly lit a lamp. My sepoys came out of the adjacent hut. As we were all trying to figure out what was happening, a man came running and said—‘Manager-babu, bring your gun, quickly—a tiger has taken a small child from a hut!’

Barely two hundred yards from the edge of the jungle, amidst the crop fields, was a hut belonging to a Gangota tenant named Domon. His wife had been sleeping inside the hut with their six-month-old infant—due to the impossible cold, a fire had been lit inside the hut itself, and to let the smoke out, the flap-door was slightly ajar. The tiger had entered through that opening and fled with the child.

How did they know it was a tiger? Could it not have been a jackal? But upon reaching the spot, there was no room for doubt: in the soft earth of the crop field was the clear print of a tiger’s paw.

My patwari and sepoys were unwilling to let a bad name befall the estate; they began to insist in loud voices—‘This is not our tiger, Huzoor, it is a tiger from the Mohanpura Reserve Forest. Just look how big the paw print is!’

Whosever tiger it was made little difference. I said, ‘Gather everyone, prepare torches—let’s go and look in the jungle.’ By then, having seen the fresh print of such a large tiger’s paw, everyone had begun to tremble with fear—no one was willing to enter the jungle. After some scolding and rebukes, I managed to gather about ten men and, beating on tin cans with torches in hand, we all searched various parts of the jungle in vain.

The next day around ten in the morning, the child’s bloodied remains were discovered about two miles away, under a large asan tree in a dense part of the jungle to the south-east.

What terrifyingly dark nights of the waning moon descended after that!

I had Banke Singh, the jamadar, brought from the head office. Banke Singh was a hunter; he knew the habits and movements of tigers well. He said, ‘Huzoor, a man-eater is a very cunning beast. More people will die. We must be careful.’

Exactly three days later, at dusk, a tiger took a cowherd at the edge of the forest. After this, people stopped sleeping. A strange state of affairs prevailed at night. From the various huts scattered across the vast baihar, people would beat on tin canisters all night long; here and there they lit fires with bundles of kash reeds, while Banke Singh and I fired our guns at intervals. And was it only the tiger? Amidst all this, a herd of wild buffalo came out of the Mohanpura Forest one day and ruined a large area of crops.

The sepoys have kept a large fire going near the door of my kash-reed hut. From time to time I get up and throw more wood on it. In the next hut, the sepoys are talking—I am lying on the floor of my own hut, and through the peephole near my head I can see the vast plain enfolded in dense darkness, and in the distance, the shadowy outline of the jungle, visible in the faint starlight. Gazing at the dark sky, it felt as if a snow-laden, icy wind were rushing in waves towards the earth from a world of dead stars—my quilt and mattress had become as cold and damp as water, the fire was dying down, what savage cold! And with it, the unrestrained, howling, ice-cold night wind of the open plains!

But how do the people here survive in this cold, how do they pass the night under this sky on the cold floor of a simple kash-reed hut? On top of that, there is the hardship of guarding the crops, the menace of wild buffalo, and the nuisance of wild boar is no small thing either—and there are tigers. Can the farmers of our Bengal endure such hardship? Even with their fertile land and their peaceful village surroundings, their sorrows never seem to end.

Two or three hundred yards from my dwelling, some harvest labourers from South Bhagalpur had come with their wives and children to cut the crops. One evening, passing by their huts, I saw them all sitting before a fire, warming themselves.

Their world is to me undiscovered, unknown. I thought, why not see what it is like?

I went over and said, ‘Babaji, what is being done?’

There was an old man in the group, and it was to him I addressed this. He stood up, saluted me, and requested that I sit and warm myself by the fire. This is the custom in these parts. In winter, an invitation to share the warmth of a fire is a sign of civility.

I went and sat down. Peeking inside their hut, I saw they had no bedding or furniture to speak of. Some dry grass was spread on the floor of the hovel. For utensils, there was one very large bronze bowl and a lota. For clothes, they had only what they were wearing—not a single spare piece of cloth. But that being so, where were their quilts or blankets for this bitter cold? What did they cover themselves with at night?

I asked them this question.

The old man’s name was Nakshedi Bhakat. His caste was Gangota. He said, ‘Why, can’t you see that pile of kalai chaff in the corner of the hut?’

I did not understand. Do they make a fire with kalai chaff at night?

Nakshedi smiled at my ignorance.

‘Not that, Babuji. The children get inside the chaff and sleep, and we too cover ourselves with the chaff to sleep. You see, don’t you, there are at least five maunds of chaff stored there. The chaff is very warm. You wouldn’t get such warmth even with two blankets. And where would we get blankets from, tell me?’

As he spoke, a woman, having lulled a small child to sleep, went to the pile of chaff in the corner of the hut, pushed him in from his feet up to his neck, leaving only his face exposed, and laid him down to rest. I thought to myself, how little does one man know of another? Had I ever known of such things? It is as if today I am coming to know the real India.

On the other side of the fire, a girl was cooking something.

I asked, ‘What is that being cooked?’

Nakshedi said, ‘Ghato.’

‘What is ghato?’

This time, the girl doing the cooking probably thought, where has this Bengali babu turned up from this evening! This one, I see, is a complete simpleton. He knows nothing about the world. She burst into a fit of giggles and said, ‘You don’t know ghato, Babuji? It’s boiled maize. Just as boiled rice is called bhaat, boiled maize is called ghato.’

Taking pity on my ignorance, the girl lifted a little of the said substance from the pot on the tip of her wooden ladle to show me.

‘What do you eat it with?’

From then on, it was the girl who did all the talking. With a smiling face she said, ‘With salt, with greens, what else would we eat it with!’

‘Have the greens been cooked?’

‘I’ll put the greens on after taking the ghato off the fire. I’ve gathered some motor-shak.’

The girl was very self-possessed. She asked, ‘Do you live in Calcutta, Babuji?’

Yes.

‘What sort of place is it? Say, is it true there are no trees in Calcutta? Have they cut down all the trees and plants there?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘A man from our parts works there. He said so once. What is the place like to see, Babuji?’

I tried my best to explain to this simple girl of the wilds what a big city of the modern age was all about. I don’t know how much she understood, but she said, ‘I’d like to see the city of Calcutta—who will show it to me?’

After that, I spoke with her for a long time. The night grew late, the darkness deepened. Their cooking was finished. They brought out that large bowl from inside the hut and poured the rice-gruel-like substance into it. Sprinkling a little salt on top, they placed the bowl in the middle and the children all sat down in a circle around it and began to eat.

I said, ‘Will you be returning to your village from here?’

Nakshedi said, ‘It will be a long time before we return home. From here we’ll go to the Dharampur region to cut paddy—paddy doesn’t grow in this area, you see—it grows there. When the paddy harvest is done, we’ll go to cut wheat in Munger district. The wheat work will be over by the time the month of Jyaishtha arrives. Then the kheri-grass cutting will begin right here in your lands. After that, a short break. In Sravan and Bhadra, the time for the maize harvest will come again. As soon as the maize is done, it will be kalai, and then the Kartik-shal paddy in the Dharampur-Purnia region. We roam from region to region like this all year round. We go wherever the harvest is, whenever it is. How else would we eat?’

‘Do you have nothing you call a home?’

This time the girl spoke. She was twenty-four or twenty-five, very healthy, with a burnished black complexion and a well-rounded figure. She could speak very well, and her voice sounded wonderful in the rustic Hindi of southern Bihar.

She said, ‘Why shouldn’t we have one, Babuji? We have everything. But if we stay there, we can’t manage. We’ll go there at the end of the hot season and stay until the middle of Sravan. Then we have to set out again for foreign lands—since our work is in foreign lands. Besides, one gets to see so many fun things abroad—you’ll see for yourself, once the harvest is done here, so many people will come from so many places. So many musicians, singers, dancing-girls, so many mimes and actors—perhaps you haven’t seen all this? How could you, this region of yours was all dense jungle—it’s only just been cultivated. Just you watch, they’ll start arriving within fifteen days. This is the time for everyone to earn.’

All around was silent. In a distant settlement, someone was beating a tin can in the darkness. I thought to myself, they will spend the night in this flimsy hovel with its unlocked gate of kash-reed stalks, here at the edge of this predator-infested forest, with small children—one has to say they have courage. It was only a few days ago that a tiger took a child from its mother’s lap from a hut just like theirs—what assurance did they have? And yet, I saw one thing: they didn’t seem to be taking the matter to heart at all. Nor did they seem particularly alarmed. Here they were, sitting under the open sky until so late at night, chatting and cooking. I said, ‘You all should be a bit careful. A man-eater is on the loose, you know? A man-eating tiger is a terrible animal, and very cunning. Keep a fire in front of the hut, and go and shut yourselves inside. The forest is right there, and it’s a matter of the dead of night—’

The girl said, ‘Babuji, we have grown used to it. In Purnia district where we go to cut paddy every year, wild elephants come down from the hills. That jungle is even more terrifying. During the paddy season especially, herds of wild elephants come and cause trouble.’

The girl threw a few more dry branches of bon-jhau into the fire and moved closer to the front.

She said, ‘That time we were below the Akhilakucha hills. One night I was cooking outside a hut when I looked up and saw four or five wild elephants about fifty paces away—looking like black hills in the darkness—as if they were coming right towards our hut. I took the little boy in my arms, grabbed the older girl’s hand, left the cooking and put them inside the hut. There was no one else nearby. When I came back out, I saw the elephants had paused for a moment. My throat was dry with fear. It was a good thing elephants don’t see very well—they can sense people from a distance by their smell on the wind. The wind must have been blowing the other way then; anyway, they went off in another direction. Oh, there too, Babuji, people beat tins and keep lights burning all night for fear of elephants. Here it’s wild buffalo, there it’s wild elephants. We’ve become accustomed to all that.’

As it was late, I returned to my own quarters.

Within a fortnight, the face of the Phulkiya baihar was transformed. As the mustard plants were dried, threshed, and the seeds extracted, people of all classes began to arrive in droves from who knows where. Marwari traders from Purnia, Munger, and Chhapra came with their scales and sacks to buy the produce. With them came a group of people to work as coolies and cart drivers. Confectioners arrived, set up temporary kash-reed structures, and opened sweet-shops, vigorously selling puris, kachoris, laddus, and kalakand. Hawkers came with all sorts of cheap and tawdry fancy goods, glass utensils, dolls, cigarettes, printed cloth, and soap.

Apart from these, came many kinds of people to earn money by putting on colourful spectacles. To perform dances, to be worshipped by the devout dressed as Ram and Sita, and a panda-thakur with a vermilion-smeared idol of Hanumanji in hand came to collect offerings. This is the time for everyone in these parts to earn a few paisa.

The year before, one would have been afraid to ride on horseback through the deserted plains and jungles of Phulkiya baihar after dusk—this year, one had to be amazed by its joyful, exuberant appearance. The laughter and clamour of boys and girls everywhere, the ‘pee-pee’ of cheap tin whistles, the sound of rattles, the jingle of dancers’ ankle-bells—it was as if a great fair had sprung up across the entire vast plain of Phulkiya.

The population too had increased immensely. So many new huts and long kash-reed sheds had sprung up overnight in every direction. There is no cost to building a shelter here; the jungle provides kash and the trunks and branches of bon-jhau or kend trees. By twisting the open sheaths of dry kash stalks, they make a very strong rope in this country, and then there is their own physical labour.

The tahsildar of Phulkiya came and informed me that we must collect the landlord’s rent from all these outsiders who had come here to earn money.

He said, ‘You should hold a proper kachahari, Huzoor, and I will bring all the people before you one by one—you can then fix a per-head rent for them.’

In this business, I had the opportunity to see so many different kinds of people!

I would hold kachahari from morning until ten, and then again from three in the afternoon until evening.

The tahsildar said, ‘These people won’t be here for long; as soon as the threshing and selling of the harvest is over, they will all flee. We must collect our dues from them before that.’

One day I saw some Marwari merchants weighing goods at a threshing-floor. It seemed to me they were cheating the simple tenants on the weight. I told my patwari and tahsildars to inspect the weights and scales of all the traders. From time to time they began to bring a few of the merchants before me—some had cheated on the weight, others had rigged their scales. I had those people expelled from the mahal. In my estate, at least, no one would be allowed to cheat these people of their hard-earned harvest.

I saw that it was not just the merchants; people of all classes lay in wait, seeking to lighten the burden of their money.

There is not much dealing in cash here. If they buy something from a hawker, they pay with mustard seed instead of money, and give far more mustard seed than the price of the item warrants—especially the women. They are utterly innocent and simple; it is very easy to explain things away and extract from them four times the fair value in produce.

The men are not particularly worldly-wise either.

They buy foreign cigarettes, shoes, and shirts. When the money from the harvest comes into their hands, it goes to their heads and to the heads of the women of the house—the women make demands for colourful cloth, for glass and enamel utensils; from the confectioner’s shop come paper cones full of laddus and kachoris; they squander so much money just watching dances and listening to songs. On top of that, there are the offerings and worship for Ramji and Hanumanji. And above even that are the landlord’s and the moneylender’s footmen and guards. The earnings they make for the entire year—by staying awake through the brutal winter to save their crops from wild boar and wild buffalo, by not hesitating to throw themselves in the path of tigers and snakes—they have no qualms, I saw, about cheerfully blowing it all away within these fifteen days.

Only one good aspect was to be seen: none of them drank liquor or toddy. Among the Gangotas or the Bhuihar Brahmins, these intoxicants are not customary—many do take siddhi, but that doesn’t have to be bought; jungles of wild siddhi grow on the plains of Labtulia and Phulkiya, you just have to pluck the leaves—who is there to see!

One day, Muneshwar Singh came and reported that a man was fleeing at top speed to evade the landlord’s rent—if I gave the order, he would have him caught.

Astonished, I said, ‘Fleeing how? Running away?’

‘Running like a horse, Huzoor, by now he must have crossed the big kundi and reached the edge of the jungle.’

I gave the order to bring the miscreant back.

Within an hour, four or five sepoys brought the fugitive before me.

Seeing the man, I was lost for words. I did not think it possible that his age could be any less than sixty—his hair was white, the skin on his cheeks was wrinkled, and from his appearance one would think he had been starving for ages and had only now come to the threshing-floors of Phulkiya baihar to eat his fill.

I heard that he, having dressed up as a ‘nonichor natua’, had earned a great deal of money over the last few days. He had been living in a hut under Mr Grant’s banyan tree, and for several days the sepoys had been dunning him for the rent, because the harvest season was also drawing to a close. He was supposed to have paid his rent today. Suddenly, after midday, the sepoys got word that the man had packed his bags and set off. When Muneshwar Singh went to see what was afoot, he saw that the accused had left the baihar and started walking towards Purnia—and upon hearing Muneshwar’s shout, he had supposedly started to run. What followed was this state of affairs.

I began to doubt the truth of the sepoys’ words, however. Firstly, if ‘nonichor natua’ means the boy Sri Krishna, was he not well past the age to play that part? Secondly, how was it possible that this man had been fleeing at top speed?

But everyone present swore on oath that both things were true.

I said to him in a stern voice, ‘Why this foolishness, don’t you know you have to pay the landlord’s rent? What is your name?’

The man was trembling in fear, like a palm leaf caught in the wind. My sipahis, if you ask for one thing, will deliver another; tell them to fetch a man, and they will bring him back bound. It did not take long to see from the old performer’s condition that they had not handled him with any particular kindness or delicacy.

Trembling, the man said his name was Dasharath.

“What caste are you? Where is your home?”

“We are Bhumihar Babhans, Huzoor. My home is in Munger, in the Sahebpur Kamal district.”

“Why were you running away?”

“Running away? No, why would I do that, Huzoor?”

“Very well. Pay the tax.”

“I haven’t earned a thing, where would I get the money for tax? I got some mustard seed for my dancing, and I sold that to feed myself for a few days. I swear on Hanuman-ji.”

The sipahis spoke up. “It’s all lies. Don’t listen to him, Huzoor. He’s earned a lot of money. He has it on him. If you give the order, we’ll search his clothes.”

The man, terrified, joined his hands and said, “Huzoor, shall I tell you how much I have?”

Then from his waist he took out a genje and, turning it upside down, emptied it out. “Look, Huzoor, there are thirteen annas here. I have no one. In my old age, who will give me anything? Whatever I earn during this harvest season, wandering from one threshing-floor to the next, has to last me until the wheat season comes again; and that’s still three months away. What I get, I use to put a little food in my belly, that’s all. The sipahis are saying I have to pay eight annas in tax—that would leave me with only five annas. How am I to eat for three months on five annas?”

I said, “What’s in that bundle in your hand? Out with it!”

The man opened the bundle and showed me its contents: a small, tin-framed mirror; a tinsel crown, complete with a peacock feather; paints for his face; a string of beads for his neck; and other such things for dressing up as the lord Krishna.

“You see, I don’t even have a flute, Huzoor,” he said. “A good tin flute costs no less than eight annas. Here, I’ve been making do with a flute of reeds. These people are Gangaitas, they are easy to fool. But the people in my own Munger district are all connoisseurs. They would laugh if I had no flute. No one would give me a single paisa.”

I said, “Very well. If you cannot pay the tax, you can dance for me instead.”

The old man looked as though he had been handed a piece of heaven. And then, his face and cheeks smeared with paint, the peacock feather on his head, he began to sway and gesture in the style of a twelve-year-old boy and break into song—and at that age, seeing him, I could not decide whether to laugh or to cry.

My sipahis were struggling to stifle their mocking laughter, pressing cloths to their mouths. To their eyes, the dance of the ‘Butter-Thief Krishna’ was a fatal affair. In front of the Manager-babu, they could neither laugh to their hearts’ content nor suppress the overwhelming urge to do so.

I had never seen such a strange dance. One moment the sixty-year-old man was pouting like a child, turning away from his imaginary mother Yashoda in a sulk; the next, he was grinning as he distributed stolen butter among his imagined cowherd friends; and then, because Yashoda had tied his hands, he was wiping away tears with his bound fists and whimpering in the voice of a little boy. The whole thing was enough to make you split your sides with laughter. It was quite a sight to see.

The dance ended. I clapped my hands and praised him generously.

“I’ve never seen a dance like that, Dasharath,” I said. “You dance wonderfully. All right, I’ll waive your tax—and here are two rupees from my own pocket as a reward, because I was so pleased. A truly marvellous dance.”

Within another ten or twelve days, the buying and selling of the harvest was over, and the extra people all went back to their own lands. Only those who tilled the soil and lived here remained. The shops and stalls were taken down; the dancers and hawkers went off in search of earnings elsewhere. The crowd of day labourers and woodcutters had stayed on only for the amusements of the season—now they, too, began to pack up their shelters.

One day, on my way back from a walk, I went to visit my acquaintance Nakchhedi Bhakat in his lean-to.

It was not long before evening. On the western edge of the horizon-spanning Fulkiya baihar, the vast, crimson sun was sinking into a line of green forest. The sunsets here—especially in this winter season—were so fantastically beautiful that from time to time I would climb Mahalikharup hill just before sunset to await the astonishing spectacle.

Nakchhedi rose quickly and saluted me, his hand to his forehead. He called out, “O Manchi, put something down for Babuji to sit on.”

There was a middle-aged woman in Nakchhedi’s hut whom one might easily guess to be his wife. But she was almost always occupied with outdoor work—breaking firewood, cutting wood, fetching water from the well in distant Bhimdastola. Manchi was the young girl who had told me the story of the wild elephants. She came and spread out a small mat woven from dry kash reeds.

With a toss of her head, she smiled and said, in the lovely cadence of her ‘chhikachhiki’ dialect of South Bihar, “So, Babuji, what did you think of the baihar fair? Didn’t I tell you? So much dancing and spectacle and fun, so many things for sale, did you see it all? You haven’t come by in a long time, Babuji. Sit down. We’ll be leaving soon, you know.”

I sat down on the mat, which was spread on the long, half-dry grass near the door of their hut, so that I could watch the sunset directly in front of me. A soft red glow had fallen upon the surrounding jungle; an indescribable peace and silence filled the immense baihar.

I must have taken a moment too long to answer Manchi. She asked another question, but I didn’t understand her ‘chhikachhiki’ dialect very well, and so, not catching what she said, I tried to cover it by asking a question of my own. “You’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes, Babuji.”

“Where will you go?”

“To the Purnia-Kishanganj region.”

Then she said, “How did you like the dancing and shows, Babu? Some really good singers came this year. Did you hear? One day under the big bakain tree in Jhallutola, a man was playing the dholak with his mouth! It was wonderful, Babuji!” I saw that Manchi took a thoroughly girlish delight in the dances and spectacles. She launched into an account of all the different things she had seen this time, her voice full of excitement and joy.

Nakchhedi said, “Enough, enough. Babuji lives in Calcutta, he’s seen much more than you have. She loves all this, Babuji, that’s why we’ve stayed here so long. She said, ‘No—wait, we’ll go only after we’ve seen all the dancing and shows and people at the threshing-grounds.’ She’s still such a child!”

I had never asked who Manchi was to Nakchhedi, though I had assumed she must be the old man’s daughter. Now his words left me with no doubt.

“Where have you married your daughter?” I asked.

Nakchhedi looked astonished. “My daughter! Where is my daughter, Huzoor?”

“Why, isn’t this Manchi your daughter?”

At my words, the first to burst into a peal of laughter was Manchi herself. Nakchhedi’s middle-aged wife also covered her mouth with her anchal and slipped inside the hut.

Nakchhedi replied in an offended tone, “My daughter, Huzoor! Why, she is my second wife.”

“Oh,” I said.

After that, for a while, we were all silent. I, for my part, was so nonplussed that I could not find a word to say.

Manchi said, “Let me make a fire, it’s terribly cold.”

The cold was indeed intense. As soon as the sun set, it was as if the Himalayas themselves had descended. The lower part of the eastern sky was red from the afterglow of sunset; above, it was a darkish blue.

A little distance from the hut, Manchi set fire to a clump of dry kash grass, and the stalks, ten or twelve feet tall, went up in a blaze. We went and sat near the burning thicket.

Nakchhedi said, “Babuji, she is still a child, and she has this terrible weakness for buying things. For instance, this time we were paid about eight or ten maunds of mustard seed for our labour—of that, she has spent three maunds on frivolous things. I said to her, ‘Why do you buy such things with the wages of your own hard work?’ But the child won’t listen. She cries, she sheds tears. So I say, ‘Fine, buy them then.’”

A young wife and an old husband, I thought to myself; what else could he do but give in?

Manchi said, “But I told you, I won’t buy anything else during the wheat harvest fair. All the good things were available so cheaply—”

Nakchhedi said angrily, “Cheaply! The Kayastha shopkeepers and the hawkers saw a foolish woman and cheated her—and you call it cheap? She gave five seers of mustard for a single comb, Babuji! Last year at the Tirashi Ratanganj wheat market—”

Manchi interrupted. “All right, Babuji, I’ll bring the things out. You can be the judge and tell me if they were cheap or not—”

Before she had finished her sentence, Manchi ran toward the hut and returned holding a lidded basket woven from kash stalks. Then she lifted the lid and, one by one, took the things from inside and arranged them before me.

“Look how big this comb is! Would you get a comb like this for less than five seers of mustard? Have you seen what a wonderful colour it is? It’s a fancy thing, isn’t it? And look at this bar of soap, just see how it smells. This also cost five seers of mustard. Tell me, Babuji, isn’t that a bargain?”

How could I think it a bargain? A cheap bar of soap like that would cost no more than one anna in a Calcutta market; five seers of mustard, even by Nayali’s rates, was worth at least seven and a half annas. These simple, wild girls knew nothing of the price of things; it was all too easy to cheat them.

Manchi showed me many more things. With delight she would show me one item, then another. A hairpin, a ring with a fake stone, a porcelain doll, a small enamel dish, a length of wide red ribbon—all these things. I saw that the list of things dear to a woman’s heart is much the same in every country and every society. There is not much difference between the wild girl Manchi and her educated sister. The instinct to collect and possess things is a gift of nature to them both. What did it matter if old Nakchhedi got angry!

But did I know then that Manchi had saved the very best thing to show me last?

Now, with a look of mingled pride, joy, and eagerness, she took it out and spread it before me.

A string of blue and yellow hinglaj beads.

Truly, what a happy, proud smile I saw on her face! Unlike her civilized sisters, she had not yet learned to hide her feelings; a pure, unadulterated female soul was expressing itself through the effusive joy of possessing these trivial things. In our civilized society, we rarely get the chance to see the female mind in such a transparent state.

“Tell me, what do you think of it?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“How much do you think it would cost, Babuji? You wear them in Calcutta, don’t you?”

I do not wear hinglaj beads in Calcutta, none of us do, but it seemed to me that even at a very high price, this could not be worth more than six annas. I said, “Why don’t you tell me what it cost?”

“Seventeen seers of mustard. Didn’t I win?”

What was the point of telling her she had been terribly cheated? In a place like this, such things were bound to happen. Why should I make her suffer a scolding from Nakchhedi and destroy this rare delight of hers?

It was because of my own inexperience that this had been allowed to happen this year. I should have kept a strict eye on the prices the hawkers were charging. But I was new here; how was I to know the ways of this region? I hadn’t even known there was a fair during the threshing season. Next year, I would have to make arrangements to ensure this sort of thing did not happen again.

The next morning, Nakchhedi left with his two wives and his children. Before going, he came to my hut to pay his tax, and Manchi came with him. I saw that she was wearing the string of hinglaj beads around her neck. She smiled and said, “We’ll be back in the month of Bhadra to harvest the maize. You’ll still be here then, won’t you, Babuji? In Sravan we make a pickle with wild myrobalan—I’ll bring some for you.”

I had grown very fond of Manchi; I was sad to see her go.